


A Hunger Unbeknownst to Us

by SevenBetter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Hard to explain, He wants to think he's a hardboi but Rey knows what's real, Honestly tooth-rotting, Picture Rey so surprised that cartoon eyes pop out of her head, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Redeemed Ben Solo, Softboi Ben, That's the type of poetic imagery I am trying to evoke, Uncharted territory, With a weird interlude between enemies and lovers, awkward space virgins, emotionally constipated Kylo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-01-29 07:34:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21406507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevenBetter/pseuds/SevenBetter
Summary: Kylo has no way of knowing her most personal thoughts, no way of knowing about her attraction to him.She's sure of it.Which means he chose this, freely. Without influence from her own feelings. Sure, there was the time their hands touched in the hut, and a few brief moments of what Rey would best describe as tenderness, but never anything belying a deeper sense of wanting.He's grown to desire her, without any suggestion she might reciprocate.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 54
Kudos: 291





	1. Chapter 1

Title from Khaled Mattawa's brilliant ["We Are Saying Yes, But Who Are We to Say."](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/150145/we-are-saying-yes-but-who-are-we-to-say-)

\-------

Rey is speechless.

In her young life, she's seen a lot of incredible things.

She can count on two hands the number of things that have truly astonished her.

And can count on one hand the number of things that have astonished her _and _put her at a total loss for words.

And this is one of them.

She stares at him. "You want...what?"

He looks anxious and impatient. A little scared, too.

Although it's rare, Rey's seem him fearful before. Which is how she knows that when she hears the creak of leather as he forms two tight fists, it isn't anger motivating the action. He's afraid. He's recognizing how little control he has over this moment, and it frightens him.

He swallows. "I'm fairly certain you understood me the first time." He shifts in his seat. No, he _squirms._ Rey has made _Kylo _squirm. "And I'd really rather not repeat myself."

"Are...are you certain you really want it if you can't even say it out loud?"

"I did say it out loud."

"Only once." She counters petulantly. 

"Once should be enough!" He exclaims, louder than their previous half-whispers, and slams his fist against the seat of the couch. Rey glares at him and glances towards the door. The door of his suite, here on Alderaan, where he's attending a summit involving many of the major senators, since he's one of them now.

_He's a senator,_ she reminds herself, and if she weren't so shocked she would laugh. The whole situation is absurd.

Kylo takes a deep breath, and mutters, "Well?"

She hesitates a moment. "Can I ask...why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you want this?"

For the first time since she walked in the room, he meets her gaze.

\-------

_He summons her silently through the Force, and she steps away from her station outside his door, turning towards it. Despite the summoning she still knocks, and hears muffled assent that she can enter._

_He ushers her towards the couch, which by itself isn't unusual. But he's being unusual. Fluttering about the room, getting up to lower the blinds a few inches and get them two glasses of water. Rey watches, half in amusement and half in alarm, as he finally shoves his cape out of the way and sits next to her._

_"There's something I want to tell you. And something I want to ask you." He says, almost gravely, and her half-amusement fades, more alarm taking its place. A million possibilities erupt within her. Leia is dead. One of her friends is dead. There's been another assassination plot against him. The First Order has somehow reassembled. _

_"What?" She forces out._

_"Lately, I have been noticing, with all of the time we spend together, I've been experiencing some changes. With the way I feel. And the way I think. About you."_

_He looks weirdly constipated. Rey is aware, after several years, that he very rarely discusses his feelings, which is probably the underlying cause of that face. She's confused. The way he thinks about her? Is he dismissing her from her position?_

_"Is that...what you wanted to tell me?" She asks slowly, and he nods. "And what was it you wanted to ask me?"_

_He goes completely still. "I wanted to ask you. If you would be willing to change the...scope, of our relationship." She blinks, still confused. "I want to ask you to expand the scope of our relationship and join me in my bed."_

_Those last five words replay in her head, and oh. Oh._ Oh._ It's Rey's turn to freeze._

_Rey feels her jaw drop._

_She thinks back, to times when he was in crisp, fitted formal robes, or explaining some complicated concept to a fellow senator, or the way he closes his eyes when he takes a sip of an especially lush wine. The way his hair sticks to his face, damp with sweat, while he spars. When they would share a joke, and laugh together in that private little space created by humor._

_All of those times, she felt attraction. All of those times, she had wanted to reach out to touch his hand, or his face, or his chest. There were times she wished she could just stare at him. Just look at him long enough that he would notice, and look back, and she could smile, or even communicate something more heated. _

_But she never once slipped. She never let a hint of those feelings show, on her face or within her mind. Luke told her she had the strongest mental defenses he'd ever encountered, and they've honed even further since she began leading Kylo's guard. Which means..._

_Kylo has no way of knowing her most personal thoughts, no way of knowing about her attraction. She's sure of it._

_Which means he chose this, freely. Without influence from her own feelings. Sure, there was the time their hands touched in the hut, and a few brief moments of what Rey would best describe as tenderness, but never anything belying a deeper sense of wanting. He's grown to desire her, without any suggestion she might reciprocate. _

_She's protected him through senatorial events on dozens of different planets, detected and thwarted two plots to try and kill him, even shut down the coup Hux was planning when Kylo first began reforming and restricting the power of the First Order. She's been by his side on every ship and every journey. Whenever and wherever he slept, she always slept in the next room over, brain still half awake, ever-vigilant in case a threat should appear near him._

_He never once slipped, either. His mental defenses, his ability to lie, must be as well-practiced as hers, because before this moment, she had no idea, not the faintest, that this was how he felt. But now that he's said it, there's no going back from this._

\-------

_"Why do you want this?" She asks directly. For the first time since she walked in the room, he meets her gaze._

He looks terrified.

Rey realizes just then that she's asking him to talk more about his feelings. But after what he's asked _her_ to do, she decides her request is reasonable. 

He opens his mouth, closes it again. "Why do I want you?" She nods, and waits.

He licks his lips and takes a breath. "You...you guard me bravely. You provide sound wisdom when I ask for your advice, you're a skilled warrior who is committed to constant improvement. Your presence calms me, and I think that's because you've come to know me best out of anyone alive. I trust you completely." 

While these compliments are certainly flattering, they don't tell her anything she doesn't already know. 

"But-" She starts, and he holds up a hand.

His voice is shaking. "And, recently, the way I think about you just started...changing. I began wanting to reach out and touch you. I noticed the beauty of your laugh, or the grace of your body as you walked. I found my eyes fixated on your freckles, or a scratch on the back of your hand, or the curve of your shoulder in a certain tunic you have." Rey realizes they are both leaning incrementally closer, and her heart starts to pick up. "By now I am plagued by these thoughts. I can scarcely see you without being flooded by them. At night I lie awake knowing how close you are and my skin itches with a desperation to have us touching." 

He gasps, and looks down to see where she's placed light fingers on top of his fist, still held tight. Her fingertips skim the leather glove, and she digs in, forcing him to loosen and begin to open his hand.

"Keep talking," she murmurs, and when he takes a breath, it stirs the loose hairs around her face. 

"As I said, you are an incredibly capable guard and I wouldn't trade that for anything. But due to the incessant distraction of my feelings, my work is lacking. My focus on my senatorial duties is slipping. And I cannot let that happen." She reaches for his other fist with her free hand, doing the same, making him release the tension. "So, I decided that my choices were either to get away from you, or...have this conversation. And getting away from you is not an option. Will never be an option, as far as I am concerned. So I decided I had to ask you."

Rey's heart is pounding, and she can feel an insistent throbbing starting up in her abdomen, too. She moves her legs and realizes she's grown a little wet. She lets out of a huff of a breath. 

"That explanation was all very...clinical." He mutters, and Rey nods. Their eyes lock. "So allow me to say this: I want things with you I have never wanted from another being. I don't fully understand my feelings, but I have decided that acting on them would not be a mistake, but a benefit. And perhaps a benefit to you, too. I think- I hope, I could make you feel good. I know you don't want me now, but I think if you were to agree you could grow to...like it. To like me."

"I already like you," she murmurs. He blinks in surprise. "I never would have sworn loyalty to you, promised to protect you for the rest of my life, if I didn't like you." There's a tiny tease on the last few words, and she sees the corners of his mouth just barely lift.

"I have to admit that I want you too." She adds, and his eyes widen a fraction. "Perhaps not as intensely as you want me, but I do feel...something." At this moment, that _something_ being the insistent, throbbing heat between her legs.

And with that confession, she looks back down at their hands. 

Slowly, deliberately, she slides her hands off of his, then reaches back again. She feels him start to tremble, and hears his breathing grow erratic. A momentary glance up at his face reveals he's clenching his jaw, over and over. 

She pinches the leather at the end of each finger, tugging, then returns to the one in the middle, pulling harder. His glove slides off. In the silence of the room, the rasp of the leather across his skin seems almost loud. Rey does the same to his other hand, until they are both bared to her, palms up, almost in supplication. Just as he has bared his desires to her. 

Rey allows her unspoken urges to take over, and she leans down to those naked, yearning hands. She kisses each palm, finds his skin warm and rough and the tiniest bit sweaty. Before she can lean back up he skims his hands through her hair, which keeps her captive there, bent towards him. With her face hidden away, he seems to regain the confidence to speak. "Rey, what are you saying?"

Rey closes her eyes, counts where all ten of his fingertips feel as though they're igniting her skin, and whispers, "Yes. I'm saying yes."


	2. Chapter 2

_She kisses each palm, finds his skin warm and rough and the tiniest bit sweaty. Before she can lean back up he skims a hand through her hair, which keeps her captive there, bent towards him. With her face hidden away, he seems to regain the confidence to speak. "Rey, what are you saying?"_

_Rey closes her eyes, counts where all ten of his fingertips feel as though they're igniting her skin, and whispers, "Yes. I'm saying yes."_

\-------

Rey watches the series of emotions that cross Kylo's face. First shock, then even more anxiety than before, but finally, relief. He lets out a long exhalation through his nose. She sits up enough to meet his gaze and asks softly, "So...now?"

"'_Now_' what?" 

"Do you want to go to bed...now?" She mutters, and despite all that has transpired in the last ten minutes, she blushes as she utters the question.

"No. Yes. No" He closes his eyes, shakes his head minutely, "I want to," his voice darkens, "so much, but we can't. I have a meeting with Senator Juna about reconstruction efforts on Yavin 4."

"Oh," She hopes her voice doesn't betray too much of the disappointment she feels.

She doesn't want him to know, quite yet, how much she wants this.

"But." He whispers, and tugs her face up towards his, "the very second we get back." Rey's heart begins to go wild, eyes fixed on those plush lips. He draws closer at an agonizing pace.

She's had enough of waiting and wondering, so she doesn't wait for his mouth to reach hers.

Instead she helps close the distance, and shivers at the slow drag of their lips slotting together. It's simple at first, just a brush of their mouths, but within a moment he's deepening the kiss, opening a little wider. It's Rey who gently bites on his lower lip, to test its softness, and he makes a small noise of approval as she moves to the corner of his mouth and lays a tiny peck there.

Before she can repeat it, he shifts his head and kisses her neck, chastely at first. But with each new press of his lips his tongue darts out more and more until he's licking her, almost. She doesn't know if this is done, if this is a normal expression of desire, but she finds her body undulating in time to his ministrations and she's gasping, digging her fingers into his chest until one hand drifts up and pulls, harder than she means to, on his hair. 

She's about to apologize but he groans, head pressing further into her grip, and she gapes at him. _He liked it._

The thought sends a bolt of heat through her belly.

She tugs experimentally again and he lets out a softer, lower sound into her shoulder, his fingers pinching a bare centimeter of skin he discovers between her pants and tunic. His hand drifts to her thigh and grips firmly.

He makes to pull her into his lap but she buffers him, with a tiny nudge through the Force.

"Can't have you late to your meeting." She murmurs. 

His eyes drift over her face for a long moment and she wonders if he might tell her to forget the meeting, to contact Juna's security team with some excuse, because his blood is running as hot as Rey's and he can't bear the thought of waiting.

But honor's been important to him ever since he gave up the throne, so finally, he nods. She's only slightly crestfallen.

She stands, then he does, shaking out his cape and straightening his clothes. Rey clips her saber back onto her belt and stares at him, at the way he can't help but loom over everything in the room because he's just so _big._

She thinks of his body pressed against and on top and maybe underneath her. She shivers.

He picks up his a datapad and stands by the door. She leads the way, scanning the hall and nodding to indicate it's safe for him to exit the room. 

For the duration of the meeting, he is hyper-aware of her presence in the corner.

Not that he isn't always very aware of her, the Force has ensured that, but with the conversation they just had, his awareness is more acute. Despite being ten feet away he can hear her breathing, hear every time she shifts her stance. She chose a well-appointed corner with a full view of the room, keeping him protected.

Kylo was born with a thrum of anxiety perpetually present within him. It's been there all his life. But under her protection, under her watchful gaze, it has eased these past few years. He feels safe.

As Semator Juna drones on about utilizing Yavin's natural resources, he sighs and shifts in his seat, widening his legs and reaching a hand back to squeeze the back of his neck. There's tension forming at the very top of his spine, from staring down at the datapad for the last hour. 

When his hand dips into his collar to rub at the next vertebra he hears, behind him, a gasp. His eyes dart into the furthest edge of his periphery, spying her blurry form dressed in grey, and he reaches into the bond with a question.

She sends him back the image of his fingers reaching into his collar, but she changes it, changes the image to his hand reaching into the back of her collar, stroking the skin there, cupping his hand possessively around the back of her neck. The image widens, shows them kissing, more deeply and hungrily than they have yet.

He clears his throat, half-choking on the air, and every cell in his body wants to urge her on, to show him what else she's imagined, but he can't, not here. He cannot stand from this table bearing any evidence of...arousal. So instead he sends a gentle, soft press of warning back through their minds, and he feels her sigh, watches in the corner of his eye as she steps back to press fully into the corner.

His eyes find Senator Juna again and he takes a fortifying breath, steeling himself against the chaos of desires within him.

He thanks every supernatural power worshiped on every planet that the meetings take place in his own hotel. 

He strides purposefully to the elevators, radiating the intense, furious energy he embodied during his every moment as Supreme Leader. He has less of a reason to behave as such, now. But he brings it back because it acts as a repellent, keeping away the numerous political schemers lingering in the lobby who undoubtedly seek a moment of his time, to convince him that their interests should also be his.

He maintains that air of rabid authority until the moment the elevator doors close. Then he exhales, and turns to her, next to him.

"Rey," he says, and she waits for him to say more, but he doesn't. He just wanted to say her name.

"You should know I've never... done anything. Like this before." She blurts, then blushes, and then looks at the control panel of the elevator, looking ashamed.

"Neither have I," he says gently, and refuses to move his gaze from her despite her embarrassment.

"At all, I mean. I've never done _anything,_ Kylo." 

He nods, steps fractionally closer to her, "That's what I mean too. I never really wanted to, until you."

She bites her lip at that, and he steps closer again. He wants to be the one that bites it. She holds a hand out, "Not til we're in private," she insists in a whisper, and he knows she's right, but the elevator feels so very private that it's hard for him to remember that the doors will be opening any second.

When they do, he's relieved she stopped him, because a small group of people is there waiting to get on.

Kylo adopts his dark, angry energy one last time, long enough for them to proceed to his suite unbothered, Rey to walk in first and sweep it, then to call to him that it's safe. He's suddenly overwhelmed with a clutch of nervousness, sweat springing onto his palms, but when he thinks of his hand in her collar, in that image sent to him over the bond, he reminds himself what waits for him inside. He steps through the door, locking it with a wave of his hand, and turns to find her gaze already on him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all I'm sorry I promise the *romance* is imminent
> 
> ALSO when typing this chapter I kept insisting that it was spelled "worshipped" and Google kept insisting it was spelled "worshiped" and basically what I have learned is I spend too much time thinking about the word "shipped" and it has ruined me ok bye


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter tonight friends.
> 
> For...reasons. You'll see.
> 
> :)

Rey never imagined he would wear so many layers. In all the times she's thought about his clothes, and taking them off, it was always the cape and the tunic, and that's it.

But instead she learns it's a cape, and a surcoat, then a tunic with that high, tight collar he favors, that reaches all the way to his jawline. Then, _finally,_ underneath all that is a simple black undershirt. No sleeves, which affords Rey a view of his arms, but his arms are not what they have agreed to.

They have agreed to everything. Rey has no idea how to proceed, so she takes Kylo's direction, removing her boots and gear and uniform. He shucks the undershirt and unbuttons his trousers but doesn't take them off, just lets them hang there. Rey's eyes trace where the V of his hips disappears underneath the thick dark fabric, and it thrills her in a way she didn't expect.

Rey undresses down to the wrap around her sternum, and the small cotton shorts she wears under her leggings. In the silence of the room, she hears the sound of his exhale as his eyes roam her body, lingering, she thinks, between her legs. 

All the delicious anticipation they felt during the meeting has heightened to the point that it's tainted by nervousness. They stand there, absorbing each other's little details, for a long time, before Rey finally whispers, "What now?"

Kylo takes a tentative step forward, both hands fidgeting. "Can I kiss you?"

She nods, and takes a step forward herself, but as he's leaning in, adds, "I already said yes. To this. You don't need to ask, about anything else."

He considers her point, and then gives one terse nod, and closes the distance between them. 

Their lips meet gently. That stirring Rey felt during the meeting is back, pushing her to touch him, to do things she thinks she shouldn't. She feels compelled to stick her tongue in his mouth. Is that normal? Would he like that?

One hand drifts up and traces the line of her shoulder. Emboldened, she lets her eyes flutter shut and reaches out for his hip, just barely slipping her fingertips into the waistband of his pants and stroking the jut of bone she feels there. He shudders a tiny bit, tilts her face up, and Rey feels, rather than sees, as their lips part and then come together again, fiercer.

She doesn't have to wait long to find out if he would like feeling her tongue. Within seconds their lips open and while Rey doesn't know if this is how it's done, it feels good. It's his tongue that reaches out first, tracing her lower lip, and she inhales sharply, darting her own tongue forward to meet his. The slick slide of the two together draws a moan out of her.

She reaches for his trousers, ready to push them away, ready to see the everything they have promised, but she feels a greater throb of nervousness from his side of the bond and he grabs her hands before they can shove inside his underwear, lifting her by the wrists and placing her hands against his broad, warm chest. 

She takes his direction and lets her hands roam there, dragging her fingertips around his nipples, tracing the shape of his collarbones and, when her boldness swells again, the trail of hair that leads down from his belly button. 

Her braid is utterly wrecked, his hands having mussed and tugged the entire time she was occupied by his chest, but when his hands trace down to pull on the tucked edge of her chest wrap she wrenches away from his mouth, feeling where his fingertips light up the skin of her back.

"Take those off and I'll take care of this." She gestures first to his trousers and then to herself. He stares at her, his gaze hard, and she wonders if she's offended him.

She hasn't spoken to him in such a commanding tone since before she joined his guard. She's shown deference since then. 

But not now. Not with what they are to each other, now.

She thinks for a moment that he'll refuse, that he'll remind her that he was the one who started this and he will be the one to say how it goes. 

But instead his hands come to his hips and he pushes his trousers and underpants off in one slow slide.

Rey's seen men naked before. But never someone she wanted. And never someone who, now quite obviously, wants her.

He looks at her expectantly after he's stepped out of the clothing, so she upholds her part of the deal. She pushes her shorts down gracelessly and yanks the edge of her chest wrap free. It takes a long moment to unwind, and she watches his breath hitch, and what lies between his legs twitches hard as the final layer of cotton falls away from her skin.

He stares for a moment longer then approaches her again, lips parting, and Rey readies to receive his kiss only to watch as he bends his head down, looping an arm around her back, and takes one of her nipples into his mouth.

She cries out, more from shock than pleasure at first, but soon the opposite becomes true, as the rhythmic laps of his tongue go straight to her core, causing a warm heat to intensify and spread through her. 

"In bed," she gasps as he switches over with his mouth, attending to that first nipple with eager, clumsy fingers. "I want to be in bed."

They're there in two steps, falling into the voluminous sheets together. She tries to crawl under the blankets but he holds her down with one hand broad and flat on her stomach. He looks into her eyes with a question, as though to ask if such control is acceptable to her, and she nods, gasping.

He presses a little harder, letting his thumb drift down to where that thatch of hair starts, and she feels her body contract in anticipation of his touch. 

They carry on that way, unsteady touches with one hand, gauging each other's reaction through the bond, confirming their suspicions with wordless glances. 

When it's all over, she lays back in the giant hotel bed, whose innumerable fluffy blankets are truly incredible. Rey's never been this comfortable in her life.

She wasn't sure what she expected. Pain, yes. She'd heard whispers of that over the years, that it took a few times for a woman's body to...accommodate a man. On top of that, Rey has suspicions that due to the size of his body, it was a little more difficult for her body to accommodate. The slowness helped. He showed restraint. Rey hasn't often known him to be restrained. But if this day's taught her anything, it's that she doesn't know him as well as she thought.

She's not sure she expected the pleasure. That part was whispered about less. Jakku was a harsh place that brokered mostly harsh experiences, and after she left there, she hasn't had the chance to have, or even eavesdrop upon, any intimate or personal conversations.

Which is why she couldn't anticipate the way she would shiver when his fingers dragged heavily over her sweat-slicked breasts. Or the million different angles, and speeds, and pressures he can apply to that little button of skin she knows is the center of all her arousal. She's touched herself there before. Only a few times, but it was to quell an occasional ache she felt rarely and understood even less. Never did she touch herself with the type of determined fervor he just used. Which is why, she supposes, his ministrations felt so much better. 

She thinks, too, of things she did to him. The ways she touched him, cupping and licking and eventually, tugging him between her legs. Near the end she insisted he push into her harder and faster, as she chased something she couldn't describe. Something as of yet, she still hasn't found. He had tried to touch her more after he himself was finished, but overwhelmed by so much sensation, she gently pushed him back, shook her head, and kissed him. _Okay, next time,_ he had whispered. 

Which tells her, if the noises he had made weren't enough, that he must have enjoyed this too. Enough to want to do it again. 

Most of all, she couldn't anticipate how she felt when he first slid into her all the way. She felt in awe.

In awe at how she lived so long without knowing this feeling existed. 

This feeling of rightness, and completeness, feeling tethered to the planet and that moment and _him. _

She remembers how he pulled back, then slid into her again, and when she tipped her head back to look at him, she saw that same wonder reflected in his gaze. "Rey," he whispered, the same way he did in the elevator, and she knew it demanded no response.

She's still pondering all of this when she feels a hand snake under the covers, across the swath of bed between them. He presses his open palm against her stomach and she sighs at the warmth of his skin.

When she turns her head, she can just barely see one of his eyes over the folds and creases of all the blankets. The singular eye is staring at her. More softly than he's ever looked at her before. 

More softly than she's ever seen him look at anything.

"Hmm?" She utters with rising intonation.

"Mmmm." He hums in response. It dawns on her slowly that he's touching her this way just because he can. She reaches down and places a hand atop his. 

Suddenly her cheeks burn, as she remembers his mouth between her legs, his fingers having made contact with that powerful little beacon Rey had so poorly explored. He drew one tight circle over it and a shocking lance of pleasure filled her whole body, causing her to flinch, and to cry out his name.

Not the name he chose. Not the one he's continued to use, as a lingering reminder of when he was briefly Supreme Leader, with the whole galaxy in his grip. A man so powerful, he could let that go, become a Senator, and retain just as much influence. Not Kylo.

_Ben._ The name, and the man, whom Rey knows still echoes deep inside him somewhere. She knows she shouldn't have, but she isn't even sure he heard her, since all he did was press his fingers harder and lick a new swipe up her center with that desperate tongue. Surely if he heard he would have said something, would have disapproved. 

Her rush of embarrassment slowly fades.

They stay like that for a while, hands twined on her stomach. Not speaking, not even transmitting through the bond, though Rey can sense his mind is so wide open it wouldn't be hard to capture what's in it.

_That is real intimacy_, she thinks. Having the ability to peer into someone's thoughts and choosing not to, because you respect them enough to only partake in what they choose to share. Because you trust them enough that what they do share is the truth.

Eventually they rise, and Rey gets partially redressed, foregoing her jacket and boots. He taps around on a datapad and orders dinner. Normally she would take her plate and retreat to her room, leaving him to review documents and prepare for the next day's events, but this time when she emerges from the fresher, the food is delivered, and he's made two plates at the small table in the alcove. He's sitting on one side, and hasn't taken a bite yet.

Apparently this new relationship goes beyond just what happens in his bed. Rey sits.

The sun is just setting over the skyscrapers of Alderaan, and she watches the light grow purple, then orange, then closer to red as they eat. 

She shifts in her seat and sucks in a breath, leaning too heavily on the ankle she injured in a recent sparring session back on the ship. His eyes dart up at her expression of pain, and he reaches into the bond just enough to identify the source.

Without meeting her eye or asking permission, he scoops a forkful of food into his mouth with one hand, while the other reaches underneath the table, aiming for her leg.

She meets him halfway and he lifts her foot, placing it on the seat between his legs. As he chews, he drops the fork, and lets both hands push slow, deep touches into the tendons around her ankle. He probes around until he finds the movement that brings her the greatest relief, and repeats it, without another thought about his meal. 

She sighs deeply at the dissipation of the pain. Her earlier thoughts about intimacy occupy her mind again, and she swallows, preparing for what she must say.

"I hope it didn't upset you earlier. When I said..."

He knows exactly to what she's referring.

_Ben._

He shakes his head before she can continue. "It didn't bother me." 

She nods, and returns to her food. He rests her foot on top of his thigh, and after a moment she lifts her other foot, resting it on his opposite thigh, and relaxing back into her seat. Is this what they do now? Was one copulation enough to make this acceptable?

He doesn't protest, so she supposes it is. 

"In fact I..." he says abruptly, startling her from her thoughts, "I think I...liked it. Maybe."

She blinks for a long moment. A man who hated his own name so much that he chose another one. A man whose anger and fear of his past led him to become terrible, to do terrible things. Now, he has grown to like the reminder of who he once was?

The strangeness of the day does nothing to lessen her surprise when she hears him say it. He's staring at her anxiously.

"Oh," is all she manages, but he's still staring, like he expects more, so she mumbles, "Would you like me to...keep saying it? When we're alone, of course."

"Of course," he murmurs, eyes growing distant, then clears his throat, "yeah I think I would."

She nods, and looks down at her plate, aligning her fork with a green bean at a precise angle to spear it evenly with all four tines. 

After the meal is finished, he inquires about what she knows regarding weapons manufacturing on Hoth. They discuss the details of a munitions report, and then she rises, drifting off in the direction of her adjoining room like she always does.

"Where are you going?" He mutters, not looking up from the document, and Rey freezes three steps from the doorway. 

"To my room for the night?" She says, confused, and glances over her shoulder at him.

"When I," he begins, and sets down the datapad, bracing his hands on his knees. "When I asked you to join me in my bed, I didn't only mean... for sex." 

It takes her a moment to register his meaning. "You want me to sleep with you as well?"

He nods, but rushes to add, "Only if you want to. I don't know that you've ever slept in the same bed as someone; I know I haven't, and I imagine the adjustment can be a li-"

"Yes. I mean, no. I haven't. But I will now." She cuts him off, not even ashamed to have done so. She thinks of all the nights she spent freezing and alone in the AT-AT. She thinks of his hand on her stomach earlier, of peering over at that soft, dark eye watching her. She thinks of waking up like that. 

He flushes, and looks down at the floor.

"But," she amends, "I should probably go muss the sheets in my room. Leave a few hairs on the pillow. Keep my pack on the chair in there. For the sake of...outward appearances."

"Very smart." He commends, and she smiles, huffs out a tiny laugh. 

When she returns, her face is damp from the fresher and her hair is down. He's already in bed, with the lights off, and as she crosses the expansive room, he flips the blankets back on the free side.

She slides in, but the mattress is so vast it's like he's not even there. She feels him inch towards her, minutely. She does the same. Then he does it again. The third time he wiggles a little closer she can't help but giggle, and she hears his own laugh muffled into the pillow, until finally they are within reaching distance, and he flips onto his back, pulling her in. She places her face on his chest, drags one leg up and drapes it across his knees. She slides a hand across his abdomen, making him shiver, and reaches for his far arm. When she reaches her target, he weaves their fingers together. 

"Goodnight Rey." She feels the reverberations of his words in his sternum.

She opens her mouth, hesitates, but remembers his words. _I think I liked it._

"Goodnight Ben."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not bad for your *first time*, you two. Not bad.


	4. Chapter 4

When Rey wakes to soft, mellow light diffusing through the yellow curtains, she forgets for a moment. 

She marvels at the softness of the bed, the clean, wintry smell of the pillow. She sighs at the warmth, almost like there's a mysterious heating element here in the bed with he-

_She remembers_.

The source of the heat in the bed isn't mysterious at all. 

It's Kylo's solid wall of a torso, inches away from her on the mattress, turned on his side towards her. He's got his knees pulled up towards his chest and one leaden arm thrown across her belly. 

_Not Kylo anymore. Not here. _

_Ben._

She peeks over at him, expecting to see that dark eye watching her like it was yesterday, but he's fast asleep. That obnoxious mane of hair is half in his face and his lips are parted. She can see the barest hint of his teeth where his slow, even breaths are gusting in and out. 

During the last half-decade leading his guard, Rey has seen him in so many different contexts. Shaking and terrified, hiding in a cargo hold just after Rey pulled him out of a murder attempt. Drunk and rambling about his parents after he overindulged in imported Sacrian liquor. Trying and failing to contain his laughter as a pompous senator got his robes stuck in the frame of the door while trying to make a dramatic exit.

But this moment is the first time she's seen him truly unguarded. Without the Force shielding, or his cold demeanor, or even consciousness to act as a defense. Just his face, and his body, and his breath, as nature intends for him to be.

That scar still bifurcates the side of his face. There is still the most jarring contrast between his inky hair and incredibly pallid skin. There is still untold power, untold potential for cruelty, in the bulk of his body. 

And yet he looks so soft. His face is relaxed, his body heavy and loose. One more thing for Rey to catalogue, among the countless aspects of him she has memorized. 

She lets her head fall back, listens to the rhythm of his breathing, sinks into the feeling of being pressed into the bed by the weight of his arm. He instinctively drags her closer, pressing the length of her body to his. Rey suppresses a moan at the feeling of his hot, hard length nudging against the backs of her thighs and she arches back into him, savoring the tiny sound he lets out as she aligns their hips. His hand drifts to skim over her bare chest, and Rey tries to reconcile her feeling of deep peace with an encroaching wave of lust. She dozes, but mostly waits impatiently for him to wake.

For them to have one another again.

That first morning is the only one she really _notices._ Every day after that, waking up next to him feels like it's what was supposed to happen. 

As nature intends for them to be.

\-------

Keeping up appearances gets harder.

Remembering to leave hairs on the pillow in her own room. Bothering to keep her clothes in a separate closet in each new hotel. 

Ben might feel a pull to sweep a lock of hair out of Rey's eyes while they are disembarking the ship. Ben huffs out an angry breath during that pompous senator's commentary on his new legislation, and Rey wants nothing more to take his hand. To soothe him.

Any time there are others' eyes to see or ears to hear, they must resist.

She's forgotten what it was like to sleep by herself. Every time she wakes up in a cold sweat, sucked back by her subconscious into the years she spent alone in the AT-AT, his heavy arm is there to pin her to the bed, to anchor her to reality.

Every night she is there, straddling his broad back, kneading the weight of his responsibilities from his shoulders before he bucks her off of him, amidst laughter muffled into his pillow, and wishes her goodnight. 

His request for them to share a bed bleeds into something more. Bleeds into sharing everything. She can't remember the last joke she didn't offer to him or the last complaint he didn't share with her.

Rey knew, from the moment she agreed to lead his guard, that the rest of her mortal life would be spent near him.

That promise is still intact, but now it has come to mean something so different. 

Rey can't think too hard about it without getting overwhelmed, without choking on the depth of what they have wrought between them. 

What's more, she doesn't need to even say it. Whenever she falls prey to the vastness of her own emotions he can sense it through their bond, will turn unerringly to her and find a way for them to steal a private moment. Pull her into a broom closet, or a fresher, once into a storage room full of bolts of cloth as he was having new robes fitted.

Wherever they are, he will find a way for them to be alone together. 

\-------

A year has passed since they started this intimacy between them.

They're back on the ship, midway through a journey to some distant system Rey can't remember. She's been forgetting little things a lot lately, distracted.

It was when they were first boarding the ship that the first seed of suspicion took root. 

He sensed the shift in the Force immediately, as obvious as a piano string that's out of tune. He waited til he could get them alone in a stairwell, Rey walking ahead of him. He reached forward as she climbed, skimmed his fingertips over her knuckles. She stopped, but didn't turn.

"Is something wrong?" he murmured, voice kept low. A lifetime of justified paranoia has taught him you never know who might be listening. 

Rey took a deep breath. 

She took advantage of the moment and fell back a step, leaning her back into his chest.

Ben tilted forward, pressed his nose into her shoulder, kissed her through the fabric. "No." She whispers finally. "Everything's fine."

It's the first time since he stepped down from his throne that he thinks she might be lying to him.

That night he waits in bed, _their_ bed, because there's no other way to refer to it now. The right side, before so stiff and unused, has molded to the shape of her form the same way the left side has molded to his.

He starts to drift off but keeps jolting awake in anticipation of her. He glances up at the ceiling, where a holo projects the time in a faint green glow, and realizes nearly an hour has passed.

Confused and a little alarmed, he reaches through the Force bond, presses gently, leaving his end open so she can see what he's thinking. He can feel her, humming there in the invisible landscape in his mind, but she doesn't respond. He can't get a hint of what she's thinking. He waits another moment, in case she's busy preparing for bed, or speaking to someone.

But after a long minute, still nothing. So he closes his eyes, takes a breath, and focuses on that hum of her, distant, drawing it closer and making it louder until he opens his eyes, and he's done it.

He got the Force to bring her to him. It used to only happen on accident, but after years of practice, the two of them have managed to gain control over it, to make it voluntary. She's sitting on the edge of her bed in a tank top and those cotton shorts, just staring at the floor, strong arms flexed behind her.

She's so lost in thought she doesn't even feel him there. "Rey," he mutters softly, and she whirls around with a guttural gasp, immediately taking a defensive stance and glancing around for her saber.

Her posture relaxes when she registers it's him, and she places a hand on her heart, "Kriff, why'd you sneak up on me like that?"

He stares at her incredulously, but she doesn't falter. "You didn't come to bed. And I tried you through the bond, but I didn't hear anything back." He says plainly, and finally, he sees her face change as she realizes her mistake.

"Are you sick?" He asks gently, and takes a step closer to her. That single piano note is still playing within her Force hum, the tone flat and wrong. 

"No." She mutters quickly, and he casts about for something else to ask. 

"Are you...sad? You seem sad." Rey blinks at him, and he doesn't blame her. With how their psyches are so irrevocably and deeply twisted together, they rarely need discuss these things with words.

"No I just...I'm just a little off, that's all." She justifies, and he nods, not knowing what else to do.

"Can I help?" He says, eyeing her dark circles, her slumped posture, the hair falling out of her three buns. Without waiting for a response, he steps forward and pulls her hair loose, running a hand gently along one side of her skull. "Let's go to sleep."

He picks her up, ignoring her small noise of surprise, and waves one hand to open the door separating their quarters. In the mere minute it takes to walk back, she wraps her arms and legs around him in a vice-like grip.

He lays her, with utmost gentleness, onto her side of the bed, and she looks up at him, curling one hand around the back of his neck to prevent him from going too far.

She pulls him into the softest kiss and whispers against his lips, "I love you." It's not the first time they've said it, but it's so rare that every time feels new. Ben's heart squeezes with the full maelstrom of what he feels for this woman, and he takes a breath, hiding his face in her neck for a moment.

He doesn't want to crowd her, so when he slides into his side of the bed he reaches out just enough to clasp one hand on her hip. He stares at her hair in the dark, barely visible against the black pillowcase, and murmurs, "Goodnight, sweetheart." She sends a pulse of tenderness through the bond, and he tightens his grip ever so slightly.

As she drifts off to sleep, he's relieved she's here, next to him, where she belongs. But he can't shake the lingering sense of unease, that she went to her own bed, unused for months.

_Something is wrong._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ominous sense of foreboding* Oh no? What could be wrong?
> 
> ...Does Rey have swine flu??
> 
> ...Did she realize she might actually prefer blondes???
> 
> Would love to hear your guesses.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strap in, friends.

Uneasy tension remains stretched through the next three days. Every moment she isn't out in the world guarding him with her usual hyper-vigilance, she's distracted. Lost in her own thoughts, quieter than normal. Ben remembers, from years ago when they were still at war, that little pinch between her eyebrows.

Now it's back. 

He makes a few more overtures over the span of those days, gentle prods to tell him. And yet she won't speak of it. 

They've encountered innumerable problems since the day they killed Snoke. Problems of literal galactic proportion, and on that basis there ought to be nothing they can't solve together.

There are moments when he knows he could creep silently into her mind. The slow erosion of their mental defenses means they are often fully open, fully vulnerable to each other through the bond. 

He could glide like a sentinel through her thoughts until he found it, the source of all this melancholy.

But he doesn't want to. More than her body, more than her guardianship over his life, more than anything...he values her trust. 

To pry from her whatever thoughts she has not willingly given would be the ultimate violation of her faith. And after all he has suffered, he will not risk this.

\-------

He exits from a General Senate assembly meeting, blinking in relief after hours of witnessing argument on legislation. Trade routes, resource allocation, border demarcation of star systems. 

Ben always knew that rebuilding everything after centuries of persistent war would be difficult. He just never imagined it would be so boring. 

As the senators spill into the atrium, everyone filters out and pairs with their security, or their staff, or some, the old and reckless ones, wander off alone to find their transports.

Despite the political discussions dominating the day, Senator Ren spent the hours having his own, internal debate. Analyzing every one of his recent actions, scrounging to find something he may have done wrong.

Something that might explain how Rey is acting.

Through the quiet hubbub of the crowd he finally sees a snatch of an arm wrapped in black linen. When her face emerges into sight, that small line between her eyebrows is still there. 

He sighs. Allows her to fall into step behind them, as they've done millions of times, keeping just enough distance as would be appropriate for a politician and his guard. 

They departed a bit late for this meeting, and were forced to dock in a very distant bay, so the walk back to their craft is long.

He mutters to her about the assembly along the way, this law or that ordinance, and he's impressed, but not surprised, that she makes a novel point regarding each proposal. Her every argument is well-spoken and well-informed.

He wonders, sometimes, how much more incredible she would be if she had been given a formal education.

They pass a maintenance worker pulling intact selenium wires from the guts of a burned out nav system.

"Do you ever miss it?" He intones, without turning his head. "Scavenging?"

He sees in his periphery as she tilts her head at him, questioning.

"I know you were barely making it, but you had so much less to worry about. Your life was so much simpler then. So many less dangers. So many less...people you loved. Who you might lose."

She inhales deeply. "I see your point, but..." she stops walking, "no." 

He halts too, turns just enough to look at her, with one hand on her saber hilt, the other fidgeting with her tunic. 

"My entire life there was a lie. I toiled and struggled in pursuit of something that would never come true. I was never going to have a family. Even if I accepted that my own would never come back, Jakku isn't the sort of place where you can build one, either."

He takes a step closer to her.

"For all that I've done and had done to me, at least now my life is honest. I believe in people who truly are what I hope them to be." She mutters brusquely. "I have Finn, and Rose. I have..." she glances around nervously, confirms they are alone. "I have you."

Ben feels his throat tighten. She says her next words with her eyes trained unflinchingly on his.

"I won't regret loving someone when I lose them, because at least I found them in the first place."

He wants so desperately to take another step, to fold her into him. He thinks again, of her strangeness these past few days.

This veil of secrecy that has fallen between them makes him feel he's about to splinter. He wants to feel her strong arms and gentle words holding him together.

Instead he offers her a minute nod, and turns back down the walkway.

When the ramp of their small, sleek transport hisses open, another sound clashes with the hollow thunk of Ben's footsteps. He turns.

Rey is crying. Quietly sobbing, more like.

He gapes, shocked. She must have pulled her defenses all the way back up, to break into tears without his sensing the slightest whisper through the bond.

He tests it, and yes, there it is, the impenetrable, invisible shield he didn't even notice until he went looking for it. It bars him from her thoughts, feelings, and instincts. It shoves a dam into the river of her conscience he normally follows, in the back of his mind. 

He feels his own eyes prickle, He grates out, never having sounded more desperate, "Rey, please, tell me wha-"

She springs into action, rushing forward and pushing him onto the ship, reaching blindly for the button and he sees behind her as the ramp hisses shut. Only the emergency sodium vapor lights are illuminated, and it throws her face into a strange light, elucidating the tracks of her tears down her cheeks, where they drip from her jaw. 

She doesn't stop there. She uses the barest edge of her Force control to guide him as he walks backwards, prevent him from tripping or falling, until they're in the cockpit. 

Rather than sending him into the pilot's chair she snaps back with her Force control, making him stumble. 

But then she's reaching out with her hands, pushing him down onto the long, plush bench that runs against the wall. He thinks she must be sitting him down, about to yell at him, or tell him something serious.

His trepidation is mixed with an odd streak of relief that he will finally know.

But she doesn't speak.

Instead she follows him, straddles his lap and rips off his gloves, capturing his lips with her own in an almost painfully tight kiss. He makes a noise of surprise, but she doesn't give him the chance to verbalize a question, sealing their mouths in a second, softer kiss and gripping the back of his neck with both hands. She's still crying, and Ben would think this kiss is for solace except she lowers her hips until they grind against his own, dragging and pressing until she feels him begin to grow beneath her.

Ben may be confused and she may be weeping, but he cannot help the way his body has learned to respond to her. A sudden shiver of arousal overtakes him and he tugs the shoulder of her uniform aside, mouths at her collarbone, suddenly grateful to be relieved of his gloves because he can reach inside the arm of her tunic to stroke at her bare, soft back.

He can see her nipples hardening, wishes desperately he wasn't wearing his surcoat so that he could feel the slow drag of them against his chest. He bites gently on the skin of her neck and hears her whimper. 

Her tears drip onto his face. 

_Let me take your pain and swallow it,_ he thinks fervently, wishing she were peering into his mind and could hear it, _I don't need to know its origin, only that it hurts you, to want to take it into myself instead._

Ben doesn't know if she was listening, but suddenly she's reaching under his surcoat, pushing it up to get at the buttons on his trousers. He lifts his hands to her shoulders, not helping, just watching as her shaking fingers slowly achieve her goal. Then she's pulling on her own leggings, the stretch fabric accommodating her jerky movements, and she just barely shoves them down past her knees.

She's sniffling, keeping her eyes down. As soon as his cock is free, she hauls herself closer, nosing into his neck. He groans as she licks her palm and strokes him twice, hard and fast, before tilting her hips and sinking down on him in one slow, controlled slide.

_Just give her what she wants,_ his brain insists, and so he finally becomes an active part of this, gripping her hips, relishing the give of her skin, and works her in his lap, works her the way he knows she likes, helping her feel the full length of him with each thrust. She's started that whimpering again, gusting her hot breath across the sensitive skin of his throat, and he wants to make her forget whatever it is, wants to bring her even the barest moment of oblivion.

If this is the only way she will let him, so be it.

So he drives harder, uses the leverage of his boots against the floor to push up into her, and she sways in his lap, grabs a firm grip on his hair to keep herself steady.

He takes one hand from her hip, and there's no space between her pelvis and his, but he makes some so he can get his hand on that throbbing bud at the top of her sex, that gateway to a climax he will do anything to give her. 

As he strokes it relentlessly her mewling begins anew, and he can hear as it goes from amorphous to half-coherent, until finally she cries, "This, this is why. Why I won't regret it."

"Regret what?" He grinds out against her shoulder, groaning as she tightens around him.

She barely gets the words out through her panting and moaning. "I won't regret loving you. Ev...even when, when I lose you." 

Her body begins climbing, reaching for release. Her hurtling acceleration is dragging him with it, making his muscles lock and spasm in anticipation, and it takes him a moment to think past the glut of lust. 

"What?" He's completely winded, but his overwhelming need takes precedence. Just needing a few more hot, tight, slick strokes into her. "_When you lose me_?"

Just then he feels inside her body that she's shaking with her impending release, and it robs his brain of any other thought.

She quakes in his arms, silent, eyes squeezed shut, her gasps wildly uneven. He pushes himself as deep as possible as he pumps one, two, three,_ four_ times within her. 

She hiccups as she tries to catch her breath, clinging to him as their heartbeats slow, as their fever cools, as he softens inside her. He waits and waits, until she's finally pulling back, struggling to pull her leggings onto skin tacky with sweat. 

He doesn't need to ask through the bond. He knows his innumerable questions must show on his face.

But she ignores all of it.

She stands, straightens her clothes, wipes her face on her arm wrap, which has nearly unraveled. Then she turns to the pilot's seat, and without another word to him, fires up and comms the control tower for permission to ascend.

Once granted, she lifts off the planet, the ship jerking a little as they finally pull away from the gravitational field, and sets the coordinates for his idling mothercraft in another system. 

He sits and watches her the entire trip. She feels more like a stranger now than she did when he first watched her, strapped in that interrogation chair. 

As they pull into their familiar bay, Ben sees the crew, and several of his administrators, milling about the hangar. He recognizes this is the last time they'll be alone all day.

He rises, steps up behind the pilot's seat.

"I don't know what's happened, why you're...different," he speaks so quietly she has to turn and look at him, "if it was something I did, or something else. Or if," his throat constricts, "your feelings have changed somehow." His bare hand drifts, fingertips grazing her upper arm. "But you will tell me." He meets her gaze. "You will. Secrets and lies were what first made me into a monster. I'll not let a lack of honesty manipulate me again."

"I haven't lied to you." She counters.

"But there's something you're not telling me." 

She's silent.

He hears the ramp open, and he takes a moment to straighten her arm wrap. 

"When you're ready, I will be too." 

He turns and walks away, and when she sleeps in her old bed that night, he doesn't go after her. 

\-------

Rey waits til he's out of the meeting. It's the first committee meeting he's hosted here on his ship. _We have the space,_ he'd muttered to one of his administrators, gesturing to the unused conferral halls and dozen private suites that have never been slept in.

Since he first became a Senator, they've been marooned on this behemoth that floats through a rotating cast of systems proximal to Coruscant. 

So he invites the eight senators from the Settlements and Relocation Subcommittee. Rey didn't expect that he would be a fretful host, but he flutters over the menus and living arrangements with the jittery perfectionism of a socialite. 

The discussion itself takes hours. She knows the negotiations over what to do with millions of refugees from burned-out planets would be laborious, and she's simultaneously grateful for every additional moment she has alone, and desperate to unburden herself.

Finally the door slides open and she nods to each official who files out. He exits last. 

His scowl is firmly in place. With every day that has passed since_ that_ return journey, she has watched his anger deepen. In the beginning he was open, patient, waiting. But with each moment she chose to continue hiding from him, that fell away.

She just needed a little more time, before he learns the truth, and sends her away.

Or worse.

Dread laces every beat of her pulse.

She has built up her courage, but it's more fragile than a pillar of ash, so as soon as they've reached his own quarters, she speaks.

"I need to tell you something."

He stiffens at her superfluous preamble. 

He's got one hand on the hook where he keeps his cape, and one pulling his boot halfway off. He finishes removing his shoes and then turns, hand still holding the hook, grip tightening until the metal screws groan in protest.

He swallows so hard she hears it, and just watches her.

She stares at his beautiful face for another moment, knowing it will never look at her with love again. Knowing soon, he will leave her. She braces herself.

"I'm pregnant." 

He leans forward, breath gusting out of him, almost like someone's socked him in the stomach. His eyes drift to the floor and dart around for a moment, and she watches with increasing terror.

She silently begs him to say something. But instead, he staggers to where she stands, and drops to his knees, ghosts his fingers over her abdomen. She takes a bewildered breath. She watches him close his eyes, and then feels him search through the Force, picking around, until he finds it.

A new vibration, a new hum. High pitched and quiet, so quiet he wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't seeking it out. Rey's been hearing it for weeks.

"I don't..." He rasps, and Rey's heart lurches.

She can't get a sense of his mind through the bond, probably because she isn't calm and can't focus. _I don't_ what?

_I don't want this? _

_I don't believe you? _

_I don't love you anymore?_

He inhales sharply. "I don't think I'll be a good father." 

It stops Rey's panic in its tracks. 

It crushes her, that this is the first thing he thought of.

She cups his chin so he looks up at her, his puffy eyes filled with fear, and whispers,

"I think, as with so many other parts of your life, your insecurity blinds you to your own capabilities." She strokes his jaw. "You are a better partner, a better lover, a better politician than I think either of us ever imagined. You have earned my love and complete trust. And I know that you can do this, too."

"But what if I fail you?" He mutters, his eyes welling with tears, his chest jumping. 

"You can't." She drops to her knees too, bringing him to eye level, and pushes his hair back from his face. "You won't. You're allowed to make mistakes in this, as in all things. Those mistakes aren't failures. The only way to fail me would be if you walked away."

"Never." 

His thumbs swipe her cheeks and she realizes she's crying too, and she leans up to kiss him, to let the salt on both their faces mingle, becoming one, as with every other facet of themselves. 

When they fall into bed, every touch is slow and soft at his insistence, despite her assurances that the baby is barely the size of the data chip, there's no way he could possibly hurt it.

"I can't be too careful with something this precious." He argues into the back of her neck, and keeps her on her side, cupping one hand reverently over her stomach with each gentle thrust. When she reaches her peak it's gentle and rolling and sweet.

And when he comes, kissing the curve of her shoulder and spreading his hands wide to cover as much of her as she can, she thinks things might even be better than okay.

He's relentlessly on her even after it's over, arm and leg draped around, caging her in. 

She whispers into the complete darkness. "I thought you'd hate me."

"What?" She feels his head lift from the pillow and turn, as though he could see her expression. 

"I..." she sighs, "I thought you wouldn't...want me anymore. That's why I didn't tell you." She turns over to face him. "And when you were at the general assembly, when you asked me if I ever wished I was still a scavenger, and I made that comment about losing people. I was sure I'd lose you, when you found out about the baby."

"Why?"

"Because it's unexpected. That's how you used to be. Responding to fear of the unknown with anger."

_Supreme Leader. Maintaining a chokehold on the galaxy. Endless power, wealth, loyalty from anyone who valued their life. The ability to shape the fate of worlds with his judgment alone._ All that fury borne out of fear. 

She's right. 

"I was sure that a change so big, something so irrevocable, would drive you back to your old urges." Her eyes begin to mist and she squeezes them shut, so tight she sees bursts of color behind her eyelids. "You'd push me away, shut me out. And find an excuse to leave me. Or find a place to send me." 

He reaches out, threads his fingers into her hair.   
  
"All those years spent in anger brought me nothing good." He says. "It never made me happy. It never brought me peace. Rarely did it even bring me a sense of control, which was what I really wanted." 

He pulls her closer, until their foreheads press together. "I vowed, after you swore yourself into my service, that I would be different. That this fledgling sense of...reason, I guess, would be what guided me. That sense of reason changed who I was, and I watched myself change in your eyes, too."

She nods, remembering all those tiny moments where he was suddenly different, and she knew that the man she so desperately hoped was dormant inside of him was finally waking up.

"And when we started this," he presses his hand to her sternum, just above her heart, "I made a new vow to myself. That this love would be what guided me."

She can hear his voice thickening, she reaches up to cup his face. "Now, when I'm afraid, neither anger nor cold reason is acting as my compass. It's this." He presses his hand even harder against her, and she feels a thrum in their Force bond. "I never want you to feel you can't be honest, ever again. No matter what happens. I will never revert to who I was before."

She nods again, drawing her mouth closer to his. "I believe you."

"Promise me we'll always tell the truth." 

"I swear." She whispers, and they meet in a slow, long kiss. 

Rey's sense of relief, after days of such crippling anxiety, is like a tidal wave. She lets it pull her into shore, and she slowly drifts to sleep. 

She wakes at a tinge of light as their craft drifts close to a passing star. He's there, already looking at her. 

"I'm not the only one who must tell the truth," he says, his early morning voice like rust and gravel. He picks up the conversation like eight hours didn't pass in between. 

"And what truth have you been hiding?" She teases, grinning a little. 

"The truth of us. From the galaxy."

She sits up like a lightning bold, ramrod straight and crackling with sudden energy, and looks down at him with wild eyes. "Ben?"

_Us._ It's is such a part of him now that he forgets sometimes it's still a secret. It baffles him that anyone doesn't know, that anyone can't tell, the way he and Rey are utterly connected, body and soul.

His arm snakes up, cupping her abdomen.

"Your body is going to grow soon. We won't be able to hide it." 

She takes a breath, sagging a little, and concedes his point with a wordless noise.

"But what's more," he sits up next to her, leaning his shoulder into hers, "I don't want to hide it any longer. I want them to know."

"Why?"

He's smirking. "Every last planet is already baffled as to why you became my guard. Imagine how much more confused they'll be when they find out you became my wife."

She squints at his insidious glee, but sees the uncertainty behind it. A slow smile blooms on her face, and his uncertainty fades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many people made correct guesses. But ultimately, Hannah_Mar gets the most points for using the phrase "lingering fear" which is literally, truly, and exactly what I was thinking as I put this chapter into words. 
> 
> While this was certainly a high point in the story, we aren't done yet. Would love to know your thoughts on this installment :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harmony can never persist untested.

Kaydel glances out the window of the training center, frowning at the battering sand storm. However long it storms, the trainees can't begin their flight lesson for the day, after which her review of their simulated missions would take place.

She loves training new recruits into the galactic infantry, but sometimes, compared to her days back in the Resistance, it just feels so mundane.

She knows Poe will give her a call whenever they finally get clearance to start the flight lesson, so she takes her cup of still-steaming caf and a datapad, retreating from the simulation booth to a lounge nearby.

She occupies her favorite spot on the couch and pulls up the Galaxy Gazette, flipping past a story about a big Pod Race on Chandrila.

Her eyes flick across the screen. Her breathing stops. Her eyes widen to the size of lesser moons. 

_SENATOR REN MARRIES LEADER OF HIS GUARD, THE LAST KNOWN JEDI KNIGHT_

Her cup slips from her fingers, the liquid splashing across the stone. A cleaning droid zooms from around a distant corner and begins sucking it up off the floor, pausing to ask, in a series of beeps, if she's all right. 

She doesn't respond.

\-------

When Finn steps off his tiny transport, the lingering dust of Tattooine still settled into the creases of his clothing, Rey breathes a sigh of relief.

She's come to know many of Ben's staff well, many of them have proven to be cordial and even friendly. But friendly is not the same thing as _friends_, the reality of which she is all the more acutely aware when she sees him striding towards her, wearing the same expression of joyous relief that she feels.

"Greetings, Empress," Finn calls from the other end of the bay, drawing the perplexed but amused gazes of the hangar crew. 

Rey rolls her eyes dramatically enough for him to see from his distance. 

"In case you forgot, he renounced the throne, Finn." 

Finn shrugs. "Let's pretend that's how you address a Senator's wife, too."

By then he's strode close enough for her to reach out, to fold him into a hug. He squeezes her reassuringly for a moment before his torso meets hers, and he leans away on a gasp.

He reaches one hand out and looks at her, questioningly. She nods, and he reaches out to run a hand over her protruding stomach, the size of a small melon, her belly button just beginning to stretch oblong. 

"Can't believe you're bearing the spawn of the Prince of Darkness." He mutters under his breath, but there's wonder in his eyes.

"I can't believe I married him."

Finn's gaze flicks up to hers for a moment, contemplative. "Why _did_ you?"

She sighs, knowing this conversation would happen, but not expecting it so soon. "I...," she struggles for a moment, "I can't tell you. I can't explain this thing between us. It's about the Force and our bond and the things we've both witnessed. The things that came for us, manipulated us, before while we were alone. I have no idea how to begin explaining it." 

"Hmm."

"I don't intend to sound dramatic. I truly mean it when I say I doubt anyone else in the galaxy feels about someone the way he and I do about each other."

She places her hand over Finn's just as the baby begins to kick, sensing the proximity of a new person.

"Let this suffice," she declares, "I knew I..._could_ love him very soon after we met. The potential was there. But that potential didn't manifest until the moment he chose the light. The moment he chose to be good. That was when I knew the man I might love still lived within him. And over these years, he's been proving it to me."

Finn considers that for a moment, taps on her taut bump and grins when the baby's foot jerks back. "Far be it from me to dictate how love ought to be." 

Rey grins, and brushes some of that desert dust off the leather on his shoulder. "And how is Poe?"

"Oh, you know. Wonderful, maddening. Somehow both the best and most annoying man I've ever met."

"All right, _now_ you've found the way to describe my relationship with Ben," Rey says, laughing, and Finn shoots her an odd glance.

"You call him Ben?"

Rey blushes. "Uh. Yeah. Only me."

Finn does that thing again, staring at her, considering. Then he smirks and whispers, "Poe's the only one who lets me call him pookie. Love does funny things to people."

"Pookie?" Rey repeats, snorting a laugh, pressing one hand to her lower back.

"When he was growing a beard," Finn mutters, barely able to get the words out around his guffaws, "I kept telling him he looked like Chewie. So then...Wookie, Poe, Poe, Wookie. They just," he threads his fingers together, "merged, I guess."

Rey howls with laughter, leaning over to press her hands to her knees, and when she rights herself again, she holds one hand out, limply. "I'll keep your secret if you keep mine."

Finn shakes it ceremoniously, and Rey uses the grip to pull him towards the doorway. "By the way, I haven't had a good sparring partner in months. You guys got a training room around here?"

Rey looks over her shoulder at him. "You really think _Kylo Ren_ would ever live on a ship without a training room?"

\-------

Ben sits back in his transport, having just made pulled out of his hyperspace jump. His ship is in sight, floating serenely, bathed in the red light of the nearest star. He sighs, slowly dismantling the lingering anger and frustration he feels. The Trade Federation has been tyrannical since before his grandmother was in power, and today, they're no better. Arguing for lowered import tariffs, asking for merchant licenses for planets that are known to engage in enslaved labor. Their greed never ceases.

A decade ago, when he was a different man, he might have admired them.

Today, he quietly, and lawfully, fights against them.

He could see them trying to quell their shock, that a former warlord would know every detail of the workers' rights abuses committed on Camino. 

He has Rey to thank for that knowledge.

With a soft smile reserved only for her, he docks his craft and strides across the hangar, nodding to the crewmen who approach to cool the thrusters and refill the fuel tank. 

He's halfway through the doorway when he feels a twinge through the Force. It hits him in the gut, makes him stop dead in his tracks. 

_Rey. _

She's at the root of it. He sees a flash of an image in his mind, of her stumbling, then recovering with a sharp breath and a gentle Force push against the floor.

_Where is she? Is she hurt? _

He has the vaguest sense that she didn't just fall. That she was _pushed_.

He replays the flash in his mind.

The floor. It was blue, and grippy. There's only one room on the ship with that floor.

Ben bolts. As he goes, he tries to send her pulses through the bond, questioning, but her focus is completely occupied, because he can feel what he sends bouncing off her consciousness like pebbles against a window.

He feels another lurch in his gut as she arches back, some sort of pressure urging her to, and he's sprinting, flinging off that cumbersome cape behind him, yelling her name since she won't reply through the bond. He gropes at his belt and realizes he isn't carrying his saber.

He turns the corner, and freezes.

He can see through the glass doors at the end of the hall precisely what is causing the sick churning he feels. Exactly _whom_ is causing it. His anger, which he so recently dissolved on his return journey, solidifies again, infinitely stronger than before. His motion restarts.

Just then Rey turns, and meets his gaze. 

\-------

Rey's laughing, just the barest edge of humor over the total focus she tries to channel as she and Finn battle with wooden staffs. She hadn't realized how long she'd gone without a decent sparring session either. 

She relishes the burn in her muscles, and the return of familiar maneuvers and combinations. It all rushes back into her brain. Her body and mind sing. This is what she was built for. 

Something odd is wriggling in one corner of the Force, something that makes her feel uneasy, but before she can identify it, Finn's grinning while he comes at her in a spin move, bringing the staff down in a controlled, diagonal arch. But his progression is slow, as to give her extra time to react.

"Oh come on, don't help me, I'm not that out of practice!" She insists, but she can barely speak over her labored breathing, and Finn seems to sense that, lowering his staff and wiping some sweat from his brow. 

"You might not be, but I am." Finn muses, and leans his head to one side, then the other, cracking his neck. "How about we-"

Rey's head whips to the left.

That same small corner in the landscape of the Force suddenly roars, huge and furious, humming with a bass frequency she knows as well as her own heartbeat.

Ben comes thundering around the corner. He ceases running when he catches sight of her, for a second, then strides with steps so wide and powerful it barely slows his pace. 

His face is...otherwordly, in its fury. 

She hasn't seen him look this way since Crait, such utter venom in his gaze, and dread washes over her.

_I was wrong,_ she thinks suddenly, and her grip tightens on her staff, _he hasn't changed._

There is that same man, untamed and unthinking.

_Protect your friend,_ some small voice inside her advises in a whisper.

She heeds it.

She turns to stand in front of Finn, who's gone quiet, sensing something is amiss. 

The sound of the door hitting the wall is as sharp as blaster fire. 

Ben stands there, chest heaving. "What. In the fuck are you doing?" His voice is low. Deadly.

His gaze is fixed beyond her, on Finn, but Rey opens her mouth to reply. "Ben, this is no way to -"

He ignores her and advances suddenly, tries to pass her, but she reaches out with one hand.

He legs go still. He can still think, still talk, still breathe. If he had known she was about to do it, he could have drawn on the Force as she did, to counteract her, but he's so blinded by his anger that he didn't anticipate her decision.

Realizing his immobility with wide eyes, Ben's face contorts even further as his gaze darts back over to Finn, who stands a ways off, looking stunned. "Do you have ANY idea how dangerous this is for her?" 

Rey's brow knits, baffled. "What are you ta-"

"Dangerous? Sparring? With Rey?" Finn sputters, incredulous, "She's one of the greatest fighters in the galaxy, rivaled only by _you,_ if you need to be reminded, and -"

"She's not herself! She's not like she was before!" Ben roars, and Rey tightens her hand, struggling to maintain her Force hold on him, but she blinks in alarm. There's a note of pain in his voice that wasn't there before.

"Just because it's been months since she's trained doesn't mean she can't handle some staff practice!" 

"_She's carrying our child!_" Ben bellows, and if there was the barest note of pain in his voice before, now it's all anguish. All fear.

That blaze of raw, berserk anger vanishes into nothing, and it's replaced by discordant noise from his Force signature, all sharp notes that ring with terror. 

Rey's so shocked by the sudden change that she drops her hold, and he takes three more steps forward, Finn instinctively retreating just as much, but then stops himself.

The air is so still it's like the very room holds its breath. The seconds stretch, the silence seeming to last a century, before Ben finally moves again.

He looks back at her, with that anguish still radiating from him. 

"She's carrying our _child_," he repeats. "I barely let her put her own shoes on, let alone carry a staff." Rey has to concede that it's true. Recently he's even started cutting her meat for her at meals. "I can't..." he trails off, nostrils flaring. Rey feels as he pushes back against that abject terror again. "I won't let anything happen to her. Anything that would compromise her safety, or the safety of the life she carries." 

Finn looks stunned. Rey knows, to hear the man he still thinks of as Kylo Ren speaking this way, must be unfathomable.

"I didn't come this far in my life to watch the only two things I love taken away because of some careless sparring," Ben concludes, and takes another breath, turning and positioning his body before her, protectively. 

Finn levels that considering gaze on Ben for a long moment, swallowing hard, and then nearly whispers, "Okay, Kylo." He reaches out and drops his staff, which settles with a muffled clatter against the padded floor. 

Ben stares at him hard for a moment, eyes flicking down to the staff, then mutters, "Thank you." Rey feels as his Force tone slowly, _slowly_ evens out.

He turns his back to Finn, facing her, and his eyes plead. "Never put yourself at risk like that again." He drifts one step closer, and Rey feels the baby's presence in the bond hum stronger with his nearness. It knows him. 

She sighs, reaches out for his hand. He offer his immediately. "It was just a bit of harmless fun."

He lets his eyes slide closed, hand squeezing hers where their fingers are twined, and breathes out, "I have already agreed to let you guard me until the baby comes. It's a level of risk I can hardly bear., but you said it's essential." His eyes slide open, latching onto hers. "This is not essential. Don't make me endure this, too." 

She tamps down the throb of formless, nameless emotion she feels, feels her eyes well up for a moment, then nods, blinking fiercely to banish the tears. 

With that settled, he appears to finally notice the baby's hum has grown louder.

The corners of his mouth tilt up the tiniest bit, and something unsure suffuses his gaze.

Trepidation, robed by hope.

He steps forward and whispers, staring down at her abdomen, "Hello."

He's close enough to touch now, so Rey reaches up with her free hand and pushes his disheveled hair off his forehead. She sighs, and his eyes drift up to hers, watching her watch him. 

"My husband..." she trails off, trying her best not to sound weary. "Fear versus anger," she states simply.

"Fear versus anger," He repeats, "fear versus anger versus...calm. And control, and intention."

She nods, and rakes her fingers through his hair one more time. 

"I ought to greet him, shouldn't I?" He mumbles to her, and she nods again, smiling wider, beaming through the bond that she is grateful, that she cherishes his effort.

Ben spins on his heels, tucking his still-flexing hands into the pockets of his surcoat, and calls out, "Thanks for coming to see her."

Finn's gaze darts between them, assessing. "No problem, Kylo."

The rest of Finn's three-day visit is, at times, awkward. But just as he's departing to return to Tattooine, Ben holds out a stiff hand, and Finn manages to overcome his shock quickly enough to return the handshake in a timely manner. 

Rey grins and turns away. 

Calm, control, intention.

\-------

She can't sleep.

The baby's awake, and so she's awake.

Ben is so aware of her, physically and mentally, that when she's awake, he's awake. 

So the three of them laze in bed, and Rey traces random patterns over his chest. He cards her hair back from her face and makes a wordless grunt.

"What?" she croaks in reply, wincing as the baby shifts around suddenly.

"A child shouldn't grow up on a ship." He says simply, and Rey glances around, at this familiar space, that is rooted to no rock or soil, gravitates around no planet. His tone in the Force clangs with nervousness. 

"Then where should one grow up?" Rey questions softly, turning her head back to look at him. His gaze is directed out the window, at the innumerable stars and moons and worlds winking in the distance.

"Many places might work, I suppose. But-" he hesitates, glances over at her, then back, "I bought some land, on Takodana. Had a crew refurbish the old house there."

She breathes out her surprise. "What?"

"It's modest, just a few bedrooms, but with a view of a lake, that you can see from a big balcony." His free arm, the one she isn't laying on, reaches up to gesture as he illustrates the scene. 

"There are large trees all around it. Places to fish and hunt. Lots of wildflowers grow nearby."

"How do you know all that?"

"Remember my trip to confer with Senator Elion about the manufacture of public transport ships?"

"Mhmm?"

"That was a lie." She can hear the grin in his voice. "Those ships were completed months ago." 

A chuckle bubbles out of her. "I thought we promised to be honest," she teases.

"You think you can forgive my falsehood, in this one instance?"

"Oh, I suppose."

She feels his nervousness return. "It's not exactly a Senatorial palace, no space for a staff of servants, no grand room to host a gala...."

"But it isn't a rusted out AT-AT in the middle of the barren desert," she counters, "Or a space yacht floating in whatever system happens to be nearby. It could...it could be _home_."

He says nothing, but suddenly she hears him sniff. She flicks her eyes up and sees two droplets trailing down the side of his face, until they disappear into the fabric of the pillow. His eyes shut, and a third tear joins its brethren.

She hauls herself up, hips tilted to the side to keep her growing belly out of her way, and leans down to kiss him. He leans up into the embrace, fusing their lips again when she pulls away the tiniest fraction. "Tell me about home, Ben." 

She lays back down and closes her eyes, drinking in the pictures he sends across the bond, listening to his low, soft voice as he describes the sunshine, and the rustle of the leaves, and the walls of the home built out of the very stone and wood that surrounds it. She can see their baby, held in Ben's arms on that balcony, wide-eyed and looking over the endless verdant landscape at their feet. 

She doesn't know if it's his mind or hers that conjures up the image, but she doesn't care which. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dramatic ass being like "Oooh harmony can never persist untested" when everything is still fine. 
> 
> One more chapter to go, folks.
> 
> I'm reluctant to end this story, but as a wise man in a great movie once said, when you try to change things, you usually end up making them worse.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the end, my friends. 
> 
> May it be what you hoped.

Rey stands near the counter in the fresher, unable to fully reach the sink, due to the rotundity that extends from her abdomen.

Since she first sensed their child within her so many things have changed.

She's hungry, all the time. Even moreso than a decade ago, when she was starving.

But the doctor gave her advice on how much additional food she needed to properly nourish the baby, and recommended that she not consume too much more, if she wanted to stay in fighting shape. If she wanted to remain a part of Senator Ren's guard. 

That remains her top priority. 

It's not that she doesn't trust anyone else. Ben's chosen his protectors carefully. It's just that she knows no one values his life more than she does. No one would defend him more fiercely. 

She wants the utmost skill and fury to stand between him and his enemies. So it has to be her.

However, Ben is constantly encouraging her to eat more: pulling a bag of spicy tree nuts from his cloak while they whiz through hyperspace, bringing her the plate of fig and quince he was offered during a committee meeting.

He may be trying to get her _out_ of fighting shape, to confine her to a safer occupation until their child is born.

He may simply want to indulge the woman with whom he has slowly grown maddeningly in love. 

She can't be sure of whether it's one or the other. But she always accepts the snacks wordlessly, with a small smile of thanks...

...then attenuates her next meal to compensate. She will not be led astray from protecting him. Even by the man himself. 

The eating isn't the only thing that's changed. Ben keeps saying her skin smells different -although she can't sense it.

"Different how?" She asks for the second time, mouth full of foam as she cleans her teeth and Ben skims his nose across her bare shoulder.

"I don't know, just different." She keeps scrubbing, keeps watching him in the mirror as he tucks his face into her neck, "More...lush, maybe. More alive. Like sunshine and verdant plants and humid air." 

"As I recall, I've never ended up smelling good when the air was humid." After decades on Jakku, even low levels of moisture in the air cause her to sweat worse than a forest pig. 

Ben snorts, hiding his small grin in her neck, and she smiles around her toothbrush. 

His tongue darts out to trace the strip of skin behind her ear and her eyes flutter shut, the thin bamboo brush in her hand clattering into the sink.

The last thing that's changed is her _other_ appetite. 

Rey's always desired him. Her arousal may have started as small as a grain of sand, poorly understood because of her ignorance of men and ignorance of her own body, but since when she first agreed to be in his bed, she has come to understand it.

Never before has she been consumed by it, though. Now, every meeting is like that one on Alderaan: she spends the duration standing guard and staring at the back of his head, or his face in profile. She imagines all the things she wishes they were doing instead. 

Then, once they're alone, she manifests each and every idea.

She feels guilty at times, when they're walking through some corridor and he can't focus on the words of a fellow Senator because he can sense through the bond her undershorts are growing damp.

As he idly tongues behind her ear and she undulates against the sink, she remembers the first time he noticed the change in her scent, last month.

He and his fellow committee members were tasked with answering the questions of news reporters from across the galaxy, to help them understand how new trade laws would affect their particular star system. 

The discussion was on an ice planet, and the frigid, dry air had caused Senator Ren's lips to chap. 

His tongue darted out and licked them, in a futile attempt to add some lasting moisture, and suddenly, as loudly as if she had played a bugle in his ear, he sees in his mind his mouth on her body, ghosting across the swell of her stomach, tongue trailing and dipping into her belly button before reaching that place between her legs, the place that brought them together, that has made them a family. 

After the current politician is done speaking, Ren quietly excuses himself from the table and heads in the direction of the freshers, a journey requiring a labyrinthine number of turns.

He doesn't need to look back to know she follows. She moves on silent footsteps but their Force signatures are harmonizing, humming stronger in anticipation of what is to come.

Before he reaches his feigned destination he seeks a supply room, finds it full of spare parts for land speeders, and hears the door hiss shut behind him. The rest of this stone fortress is heated, but this room is not. There are notable gaps around the border of the one grubby window, letting the cold air whistle in. He turns around.

There she is, pressed against the doorframe, arms pinned behind her back. Her posture accentuates her breasts, just beginning to grow from her rising hormones, and his eyes are drawn to their unexpected fullness, to the way they cause her body wraps to drape differently.

"I'm sorry," she rasps, her eyes wide and regretful, but her chest is rising and falling, fast.

He doesn't ask her to clarify. He doesn't need her to.

_I'm sorry my body has usurped my control of myself._

_I'm sorry that even in your most important moments, I can't hide what I'm thinking._

_I'm sorry I'm so imperfect. That I'm such a burden._

"Never apologize for how you want me." He says, softly but emphatically, the power of his words evident in the restraint of their delivery. "Never. It is...the greatest gift."

He takes two steps closer and sees her push her shoulders back a little more, straighten up a little higher. Anticipating.

"It's this same sort of wanting that led me to start all of this," he gestures between them.

"What sort of wanting?" She asks, with the slightest edge of a whine.

"Unbearable." He nearly whispers, and clenches his fist just remembering it, all the nights he spent alone wishing, wondering if he would ruin what they had by asking for what he dreamt. "That sort of wanting."

Her eyes slide shut, "That's exactly it."

He takes advantage of her closed eyes to eclipse the remaining distance between them and when he does, he sees her upper arms, exposed to the room, pebbled with goosebumps. He knows she trembles for another reason besides lust.

_Shivering._

He tears off his heavy silk velvet cape and gives her a Force nudge away from the wall, just enough for him to slip the length of fabric, warmed with is body heat, around her shoulders.

She sighs as it settles around her, and he lets his hands linger on her shoulders for a moment, eyes fluttering open. He waits until he has pinned her gaze to his own then slides his hands down to those swollen breasts, relishing the way her soft moan is punctuated by an even softer wince.

_Sensitive._

He's gentle, all featherlight fingertips and cupped hands as her nipples grow hard through the fabric, hard enough to worry them with his thumbs while her clothing provides a buffer.

He leans in closer and she tilts her chin up, knowing his goal immediately. 

After three soft, slow kisses, he murmurs against her mouth, "Let me taste you." 

Her breath gusts out, "Please," and it's all he needs, to let his hands trail lower and bracket her hips, to drop to his knees and spend a short moment palming himself through his trousers as he takes in her smell. 

He stops short, blinking, then presses his face into her, urging his nose as deeply between her legs as he can. 

_Something's changed,_ he sends through the bond, but he can see she's so addled with desperation she's barely heard him.

He sends a pulse intended to grab her attention and it works, her eyes fly open on a gasp, and she looks down at him, cheeks red and eyes glassy.

"Something's changed," he says again, out loud, his voice strained. "You smell different."

Her brow knits and he dives back in, taking in huge lungfuls, unable to precisely describe it, but acquainted enough with its normalcy to know that this is not what he expects.

"Wonder if you taste different, too," he muses, and Rey's hands are there in a flash, helping him push her tight gray leggings down to the tops of her boots, the stretch in the fabric allowing her enough range to get her thighs apart.

He takes no quarter, laving one wide stroke with his tongue flat, then points it right as he reaches her bud. She groans, coherent enough to notice the pulse through the Force asking her to play with his hair, and she grabs on, hard.

_It's..._ He sends through the bond, hearing the hum of both their signatures rise, _it's..._

_What is it? Tell me, Ben._

_It's ripe,_ he finally decides, _and fertile, and begging to be brought to life, and_

She moans. _Do you...like it?_

His eyes dart up and skim across the vertical expanse of her body, find her own staring back down at him.

_Uncertain._

He answers by lifting his hand and pushing two fingers inside her.

She curls around him, his cape shrouding them both until he's in near-darkness, and he can see her point of view in his mind, how she can no longer see his ministrations and must focus solely on how they feel. It renews his fervor, if it's even possible for it to be heightened anymore, and he brings her closer and closer to her peak, driving his face and hand against her and into her until she's alternately going limp, then tensing up.

But just before she falls over the edge she whispers into the frigid air, "Want you inside me."

His fingers are already buried, so he knows she must mean something different. 

He rises, ducking to kiss her then pulling away to suck his fingers clean, to show her just how much he _likes it_. 

He pulls open his trousers and lifts her, onto a ledge built into the back of the door, an inch too low, such that he will have to bend his knees to join their bodies. She pulls the cape around them both as he lines up. He knows it's ridiculous but as he glides through her folds and then slides home, he swears her arousal_ feels_ different too, calls to him, asks for him to leave a part of himself within her.

He thrusts are slow, and filthy, and grinding, and it takes Rey no time at all to come back to that precipice, to wilt in the fugue of pleasure, then thrash as he changes angles or presses in harder.

One large hand cups her rounded stomach, the baby sleeping unaware, signature ringing out safety and contentment. This life they have made is cradled, protected by their bodies, just as they protect each other. 

"When the baby comes," he gasps against her hair, tilting to kiss her for a moment, "I will give you all the time you need for your body to be your own again." 

She nods, gripping the back of his neck, and he can feel her inner muscles just begin to tremble.

"But as soon as I have your word, the very moment you want me again," his thrusts speed up, her trembling too, and after a few more rhythmic pushes she's squeezing him, pulling him in deeper, "I am putting another baby in you."

She cries out, finally, after so much labored breathing in relative silence, and it's her cry that finishes him, makes him spill within her, his spend unable to fulfill its biological imperative, due to what already lies within.

They clutch one another, limbs tangled, arms tight in an effort to express the emotions they cannot describe, no matter how hard they try.

Ben takes some comfort in knowing she's just as stunned by her capacity to love as he is by his own. 

He presses even closer, the space inside the cloak warm, and dark, and theirs. 

\-------

Rey goes into labor while they're docked in Canto Bight. 

Ben's in the middle of an incredibly bland meeting about revisions to the new intergalactic tax code, staring at a tiny insect repeatedly try to make its way into the overhead light, when suddenly he feels it.

Like a missile exploding in the Force, and he jerks. As it fades, he picks out the Rey's particular hum, paired with that higher hum he hears from the baby, and then Rey's speaking directly into his mind.

_It's time._

The baby is two weeks early. 

He stands up so quickly his chair knocks back, and the droning politician turns to him. "Senator Solo? Is something the matter?"

"Forgive me, ma'am. My wife has just gone into labor."

Wife. He's still not used to the taste of that word in his mouth, it feels foreign, like it doesn't belong to him.

"How did you kn..." The woman splutters, looking down at the dark, unused datapad in front of him.

"Jedi mind connection." A seasoned local Senator mutters offhandedly, and Ben shoots him a grateful glance that he didn't have to be the one to explain.

"If everyone will excuse me."

"Of course," she murmurs to him, shoots him a brief, tight smile. 

Having a family has softened some of the barriers between him and the rest of the Senate. It's humanized him, in their eyes.

He walks at a brisk clip and takes the stairs, unwilling to wait for the elevator. 

The med-craft carrying Rey couldn't wait, taking advantage of a lull in the traffic, so Rey keeps an open line between their minds, showing their progress as they zip towards the hospital. Their bond becomes punctuated by growing pain and fear, and every second Ben isn't with her, his skin crawls.

Two lieutenants under Rey's command come bursting out of a nearby room as he sprints through the lobby. "Senator! Wait, sir, you can't go unguarded!"

He ignores them.

He hands an absurd amount of credits to a waiting transport craft on the sidewalk and mutters, "The hospital. Now."

The driver seems to get the picture, and Ben's sure they almost get into an accident about fifteen times on the journey. But they don't, and when they arrive, he launches himself out and through the glass doors, just in time to see Rey on a hovering gurney being taken around a distant corner.

"Sweetheart!" He bellows down the hall, and her head raises over her protruding stomach long enough for him to see flushed cheeks and hair stuck to her face with sweat.

"Ben!" He hears her cry weakly, and he takes off down the hall. 

The head nurse stops him in his tracks just before a set of doors. "Senator, I must insist you wait here, in the antechamber." Her heavily powdered jowls shake as she speaks. 

"I _will_ be in there with my wife."

Her expression is scandalized. "This is Canto Bight, sir. We have rules. Expectations. Propriety!" Ben can feels a throb of her pain and panic in his mind. "A man does not belong in the labor room, it is not an accepted part of society."

"If I were her mother or father, would you let me in? To act as a support?" She nods slowly.

"Blood relatives, of course, are an exception."

"My wife has no parents. No siblings. She was abandoned as a child." His voice cracks. "Her friends are all in different systems from this one. I _am_ her family. Without me, she will be alone." His tone grows vicious. "And I will not let that happen."

The nurse gives him a hard stare for a moment, then steps back to let him through.

He follows the grating sound of her signature and bursts into the room.

He grabs her hand and her head lolls towards him, eyes cracking open. She's nude with a cloth draped over her, splayed on the bed while the doctor takes a look between her legs, and she croaks, "Ben, I need you, please stay, I can't do this."

"I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. I know you can do this. Rey, you're the strongest person I know. Remember what we practiced? Go inwards, find the baby's Force signature. Latch onto it. Amplify it."

He begins breathing in the calming pattern he read about in a book. Soon Rey is mimicking him, and the two of them breathe together. He feels her relax, feels the panic leave her emotional projections, and senses her body loosening. "Good, good," the doctor comments, and Ben uses his free hand to rub the strained skin of Rey's stomach.

Her limbs are still so lithe yet her stomach so round, when she still had her clothes on it looked like she had a droid stuffed under her shirt. Now Ben can see the shape has shifted, more oblong, as her body prepares for the baby to leave. He shudders thinking of what her muscles and sinews are about to do, but carefully shields that thought from her, and they continue on with careful breathing and Force meditation.

The wave of the next contraction hits her.

She takes a deep breath and crushes his hand.

Ben's experienced a lot of physical pain in his life, but with the manic strength of her grip, he still winces. 

She makes almost no noise now, just deeply ragged breaths and the occasional groan. She's focused, as much in control as one can be when their body panics and realizes a gestating baby has grown too large and must be evacuated. 

Ben crouches there for nearly three hours, in awe of the power she maintains over herself, in awe that she's deemed him worthy of sharing her time, her thoughts, her life. 

After another glance underneath the sheet, the doctor leans up. "Madam Solo, it's time to push." 

Rey's eyes fly open and Ben presses his mouth to her ear. "It's time, sweetheart. The baby's ready. You're ready." 

She nods, and Ben feels her sense of determination emanating. He keeps his forehead pressed against her skull, slowly exhales, and ignores the room. All his mental space and energy, every last inch, radiates calm and purpose, flowing into her like water. It's like everything except for the two of them goes still.

A sound penetrates his mind: the doctor calls out that the baby is crowning.

Ben whispers to her, "Here we go." She nods against his forehead, squeezes her eyes shut and finally lets out one long, anguished sound. She bites into her lower lip, and Ben reaches forward in a flash to pull her lip down with his thumb, to prevent her from injuring it. Her eyes lock onto his. She gasps sharply.

The doctor leans up. "Senator, Madam. It's a girl." 

A pulse of shock emanates from both of them, and for a second, everything is still again.

Ben doesn't even realize he's smiling until Rey reaches out and traces the corner of his mouth with a sweaty hand. 

Suddenly desperate to see, he leans away from her just as the squalling starts, and he sees a tiny purple pinkish thing with a tuft of dark, matted hair showing off her gums as she cries. 

There's a rush of necessary steps: cutting the cord, wiping the baby down, a red scanner that determines if her blood has enough oxygen saturation. Then they hand her, nude and wrinkled, to her mother, whose stunned expression doesn't change as she cradles the baby against her warm chest. The baby curls in towards Rey and Ben stares, thinking of how small and vulnerable and exposed she is.

He reaches down and cups a wide, warm hand against the baby's back, covering her. Shielding her. Ben feels her absurdly delicate skin, his fingertips brushing that dark hair.

After the baby's cries quiet, after she's latched onto her mother's breast and everyone can take a breath, Rey reaches out with her free hand and pushes Ben's hair back from his face, his favorite way she gets his attention.

"I'd like to ask you something." She says, and there's an odd lilt to her voice that he can't explain. Her eyes glitter with mirth.

"What?"

"Are the trees on Takodana still tall?"

_That day, months ago, when he told her of what he'd done for them in secret._

"Yes."

"The lake still blue? Stocked with fish?"

"Mhmm."

"The weather still temperate?"

"Yes."

"The house still just enough space for us?"

He says it again, this time on a laugh, "Yes."

She grins up at him, exhausted and sweaty and _beautiful. _

Looking at her, all his fear is gone. His fear about becoming a father, becoming a husband, about the future of humanity. And with the flight of his fear, so flown is his anger.

"Just one more question," she adds, but before Ben can respond, a tiny hand grasps around his finger. He looks down, at a pair of hazel eyes riveted to his looming form, and leans down to place the softest, lightest kiss to the baby's forehead. 

"Take us home?"

There, in the tiny space occupied by their three faces, he whispers it one last time.

"Yes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


End file.
